On the Internet, content hosting websites or other applications, e.g., content sharing servers, allow users to upload, view, and share digital content. Such digital content may include audio clips, movie clips, TV clips, and music videos, as well as amateur content such as video blogging, short original videos, pictures, photos, etc. A viewer can then view the content that is streamed from a content sharing server to a viewer device for playback, where the quality of the streaming content can vary depending on the network connection of the viewer device. For example, the viewer device can request lower quality content if the connection speed is slow to prevent buffering that disrupts the playback of the content.
However, viewers may desire to have the content available, e.g., temporarily available, for viewing offline, e.g., without a connection to the Internet or another network. For example, a user may determine during the playback of certain content that the user would like to play the content again later or share the content with someone else when the user does not have access to the content sharing server. Further, a user would likely desire to have the highest quality content available for offline playback, because network conditions are not an issue when the content is not being streamed.